BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE,BIG DATA MANAGEMENT,DATA SCIENCE
ACA Group | September 26, 2022
ACA Group (ACA), the leading governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) advisor in financial services, today announced that it has acquired Ethos ESG (Ethos), a provider of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings data and software for financial advisors, asset managers, institutions, and investors.
This acquisition marks ACA’s first analytics offering, which will be paired with ACA’s ESG experts to form an integrated tech and advisory offering under the ESG Advisory practice. ACA’s existing ESG Advisory practice supports with a range of programmatic needs for firms that integrate ESG into their business or investment activities. This currently includes advice and implementation support around strategy, policies/procedures, regulations and frameworks, training, and external reporting, among other areas. With Ethos, ACA’s clients will now also be able to easily analyze investments and automate several elements of ESG reporting.
Founded in 2019, Ethos offers an interactive platform that allows for the evaluation of over 350,000 impact ratings including companies, stocks, and funds through a prism of 45 ESG causes such as climate change, racial justice, mental health and more. Providing full transparency into how each impact score is calculated and the ability to upload portfolios and create models, Ethos allows for GRC professionals to understand the ESG characteristics of their investments and make responsible decisions that align with their firm's values and ESG commitments.
Ethos uses a proprietary set of approximately 100 underlying databases to generate its ratings. These databases provide a unique impact view of ratings, as well as provide insight into key metrics where available. The databases are fully transparent, so clients can see which underlying database source for each data point. Ethos also has capabilities developed to quickly scrape the public domain for material publicly available information to include in the ratings. These state-of-the-art capabilities allow Ethos to quickly add company coverage to help clients achieve full coverage of their investment portfolio.
Ethos has invested in innovation through the recent launch of its Impact Calculator, an embeddable widget that takes a dollar amount and immediately calculates the real-world equivalent impact of investing that amount in a specific fund or other product, compared to a benchmark.
Additionally, Ethos recently introduced its Carbon Neutral Certification program for mutual funds and ETFs, developed in conjunction with Change Finance. Through the certification, Ethos performs an independent analysis of a funds carbon footprint (covering Scope 1 and Scope 2 emission) and carbon credits (offsets) to verify whether the fund is carbon neutral during a specified period.
“This is an exciting step in helping to grow our presence in the ESG space and is ACA Group’s first foray into analytics as a service,” said Shvetank Shah, CEO of ACA Group. “We are invigorated to be building out and launching our data capabilities, starting with Ethos ESG. Combining data with our scalable solutions will continue to empower our clients to reimagine GRC and protect and grow their business.”
“We are thrilled to partner with ACA Group, as their brand and reach in the GRC space is well-known. “Not only is taking into consideration the ESG impact of your decisions right on its merits, but greater transparency into ESG issues helps firms mitigate risk and make informed choices while growing sustainably.”
Luke Wilcox, Founder and CEO of Ethos ESG
“This pairing will help us to leverage data in a new way to help firms of all sizes develop and monitor their ESG programs to mitigate risk, make informed choices, combat greenwashing, and grow profitably and sustainably in the process. Access to high-quality, transparent ESG data is an essential part of any ESG endeavor, and our partnership with Ethos will allow us to build and protect our clients’ ESG strategies in ways few others can,” said Dan Mistler, Head of ESG Advisory at ACA Group.
About ACA Group
ACA Group (ACA) is the leading governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) advisor in financial services. We empower our clients to reimagine GRC and protect and grow their business. Our innovative approach integrates advisory, managed services, distribution solutions, and analytics with our ComplianceAlpha® technology platform with the specialized expertise of former regulators and practitioners and our deep understanding of the global regulatory landscape.
About Ethos ESG
Founded in 2019, Ethos ESG provides data and analytics for financial advisors, asset managers, institutions, and investors. With over 350,000 impact ratings of stocks and funds across 45 causes, Ethos ESG helps firms offer robust impact reporting, monitor and address sustainability risks, and enhance quantitative research and modelling with transparent ESG data.
Read More
BIG DATA MANAGEMENT,DATA SCIENCE,MACHINE LEARNING
Pega | September 22, 2022
Pegasystems Inc., the low-code platform provider that builds agility into the world's leading organizations, today announced Pega Customer Data Connectors that enable clients to easily connect their existing customer data platforms (CDPs) and other signal providers to Pega Customer Decision Hub™. These connectors allow organizations to stream signals from high-value platforms like Adobe, Celebrus, and ZineOne, and activate customer insights in real time with AI-powered decisioning.
Many organizations use CDPs to manage an overwhelming influx of streaming data from customers, channels, and lines of business, with the goal of identifying customer intent and better predicting behavior. But CDPs alone lack the level of decisioning and orchestration required to truly optimize an end-to-end customer experience, so insights often sit untapped as data stagnates and quickly becomes useless.
To help brands operationalize that data more efficiently, Pega has introduced connectors between the market's top data providers and Pega Customer Decision Hub – the always-on 'brain' centralizing AI-powered decisioning across inbound, outbound, owned, and paid channels. These connectors allow organizations to input their most valuable data sources – such as streams of raw event data or curated behavioral signals – into Pega's real-time AI, then optimize customer interactions using next-best-action decisioning without being locked into a specific data vendor.
These out-of-the-box Pega Customer Data Connectors enable clients to activate well-curated data from many of the world's most popular platforms, including:
Adobe Experience Platform, by integrating Adobe profile and segment signals. The connector streams real-time segment membership data directly to Pega Customer Decision Hub, where it can be used to power machine learning models, define engagement policies, and power omnichannel next-best-action decisions.
ZineOne, by connecting ZineOne's in-session propensity-to-purchase scores with Pega's next-best-action decisioning. These scores help brands better target consumers who are likely to buy, flag on-the-fence customers for re-targeting, and trigger journey-specific actions – all without incurring incremental acquisition costs.
Celebrus, by integrating Celebrus' real-time data capture, identity management, and signal curation capabilities. Celebrus helps brands capture first-party data without tagging and convert that raw data into high-value intent signals. The connector feeds those insights to Pega, which uses its propensity modeling to identify and trigger relevant messages and help significantly increase response rates.
"Every day, companies leave a goldmine of insight on the table because their vendors lack the decisioning capabilities required to operationalize intent, impacting the customer experience. "At the same time, it's unrealistic to expect brands to replace the customer data solutions they've already invested in. That's why Pega is launching Pega Customer Data Connectors - to help clients activate data at its fullest potential, with the freedom to use their CDP of choice. They can feed in whatever event streams or curated signals make sense for their business and Pega's AI will help put it to work – and use the insights to build much deeper, more valuable customer relationships."
Matt Nolan, senior director, product marketing, Pega
About Pega
Pega provides a powerful low-code platform that builds agility into the world's leading organizations so they can adapt to change. Clients use our AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation to solve their most pressing business challenges – from personalizing engagement to automating service to streamlining operations. Since 1983, we've built our scalable and flexible architecture to help enterprises meet today's customer demands while continuously transforming for tomorrow.
Read More
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE,BIG DATA MANAGEMENT
Analytics8 | September 23, 2022
Analytics8, a data and analytics consulting firm that specializes in designing, developing, and deploying modern data solutions, has announced the acquisition of Denver-based Mashey, a high-end data analytics consultancy focused on modern data technology.
The move to acquire Mashey—which was finalized on Sept. 16, 2022—enables Analytics8 to further its goal of continued growth while providing exceptional data services to clients, career development opportunities for its staff, and enhanced partnerships with industry vendors.
"Our objective is to build Analytics8 into the premier independent data and analytics consulting firm in North America." said David Fussichen, CEO of Analytics8. "This is another step in that direction."
"We are delighted to welcome Mashey's entire team because they demonstrate and support the core values and business philosophy of Analytics8—where employees can grow their careers by engaging in interesting, meaningful client work, and where clients can come to expect the best experience working with a data and analytics consultancy."
Mashey brings to Analytics8 additional capabilities around modern data technology, including dbt, Fivetran, Snowflake, Looker, Qlik, Airbyte, Sigma, Monte Carlo, and Firebolt, along with valued perspectives that come with years of experience in the data and analytics space.
"We aim to be the best data analytics team possible, both for our customers and for ourselves," said Philip Lima, founder of Mashey. "Combining the Mashey team with Analytics8 will ensure we all get there even faster."
As Analytics8 sets goals for continued growth, the company also renews its commitment to its employees, to foster an environment that promotes inclusivity and career development; and to its clients, to provide customer-centric data services that change how they work with data.
If you're interested in learning more details about this acquisition, check out the interview with Analytics8 CEO, David Fussichen, and Mashey founder, Philip Lima.
About Analytics8
Analytics8 helps organizations make smart, data-driven decisions by translating their data into meaningful and actionable information. Our data consultants help with the entire data and analytics lifecycle—from strategy to implementation—so companies can make sense of their data and use it to solve complex business problems.
Read More